If you love turning up at gigs, you’re going to love CrowdStream – a free Android and iOS app that claims to connect avid music fans with their favorite stars at live events. In fact, CrowdStream happens to be one of those few apps that are equally popular among music stars and fans. Essentially an event discovery and social network for die-hard music followers, CrowdStream lets its users – both artists and fans – share exclusive photos, comments and feedbacks of live concerts with the world in real-time. Not just that; the app also serves as a one-stop shop for tracking past, ongoing and upcoming musical shows from virtually any part of the globe. In addition, it allows users to search for and follow their favorite performers, and has the capacity to fetch your favorite artist information from your local music library, as well as your Facebook account.

Both the Android and iOS variants of CrowdStream share more or less the same sleek layout, with the following five main tabs forming the crux of the app: Events, Crowd, Camera, Stream and Profile. However, before hopping onto the network, you need to log in using a CrowdStream or Facebook ID. New accounts can be created from within the app for free. Let’s now take a look at what features you’ll be getting from under each aforementioned tab.

Events:

The Events section is further divided into three main tabs. The Now tab is from where you may check out the list of ongoing events and check-in to your favorite one. The remaining two, Upcoming and Past, as evident by their respective titles, list out relevant events. Content present under each varies accordingly. For instance, tapping the Now tab lets you sneak peek into the live stream of content shared during an ongoing event. Content is filterable in a way to view comments and photos shared by only the artists, or by anyone present at the concert. Needless to say, you may also share your sentiments about anything that is a part of the stream.

Provided you’ve checked-in to a particular event and are present at the arena at that very instance, you may also share captured photos across the CrowdStream network. Want to buy some memorabilia from your favorite event? Just hit the Store tab and head over to the CrowdStream online market to purchase event-specific stuff. For each upcoming event, the app also displays brief location and artist info, and helps you connect to the ticket-booking service. It is also worth mentioning here that to help you easily track events from a specific location, the app lets you view event locations on map via individual placemarks.

Crowd:

It is from this particular tab that you may allow the app to fetch artist information from your local music library, as well as from the artists that you’ve liked on Facebook. Once all information has been gleaned, you may set custom alerts for your favorite artists’ events in multiple ways. For instance, the app lets you set alerts for upcoming events in or around your vicinity, or from anywhere in the world. Furthermore, this segment of the app lets you manually search for and follow artists, as well as other app users’ activities.

Camera:

Once you’ve checked-in to a specific show and are attending it live, you can start capturing and sharing events photos from under this tab. Unless both said conditions are met, you won’t be able to access the photo sharing feature.

Stream:

Obvious enough from its title, this particular tab presents you with the live stream of the content –photos, comments and likes – from the events/artists that you’re currently following. Whether it’s checking out interactions on your shared photos or those shared by other app users, it all becomes possible from here. Apart from commenting on and liking your favorite content, you may also share it further across Facebook and Twitter.

Profile:

The name says it all; whether you wish to alter your profile settings, associate your Facebook/Twitter account with the CrowdStream network, keep a tab on the events and artists that you’re following, or check out the photo stream that you’ve personally shared, it all can be managed from under this particular tab.

Oddly enough, for an app that is otherwise quite polished in terms of graphics, it doesn’t fare all that well with rendering the photo thumbnails throughout its interface. Thankfully, there is no such issue with the photos that are shared across the network. All the minor glitches aside, CrowdStream has enough potential to make a noteworthy impact among hardcore music followers through its live content sharing and interaction with not only other app users, but more importantly, with the artists themselves.

CrowdStream for Android is absolutely free in the Google Play Store, and requires Android v2.2 or higher to run. Grab the app via the link or QR code provided below.